"The Bay," by Allston James, ran in the September 1990 issue of SURFER Magazine. This version has been slightly edited and reformatted.


Waimea Bay has always been a place that defined limits, both oceanic and human. Name a surfer anywhere who hasn’t wondered if he would ever have the desire and skill to ride Waimea. It’s a potentially disturbing question that resides in every surfer’s consciousness, to one degree or another.

Imagine the feeling of being the first person to paddle out there—speaking of disturbing.

Morning, November 1957: “The forbiddingness of the place is what made Waimea so compelling,” recalls Greg Noll in 

. “I wanted to try it but didn’t have the balls to go out by myself. So I kept promoting the idea of breaking the Bay. Buzzy Trent, my main opponent, started calling me the Pied Piper of Waimea. He said, ‘Follow Greg Noll and he’ll lead you off the edge of the world.’”

Trent, who would soon emerge as a Waimea master, had every reason to be wary: He and a handful of others who were opening up North Shore surfing frontiers were keenly aware that Waimea Bay was where Dickie Cross died a few years before, after he and Woody Brown had paddled down the coast from closed-out Sunset. Miraculously, Brown made it to the beach. Cross disappeared in the mountainous surf.

Noll continues: “I finally jerked my board off the top of the car [and paddled out]. That was it. It was simple. The ocean didn’t swallow us up, and the world didn’t stop turning.” Noll describes the boards they rode that first day as “ridiculous,” a factor that magnifies the achievement.

“Pat Curren and Noll had surfed the North Shore the winter before,” says Mickey Munoz, also there for that first go-out. “They had some primitive guns, but I was actually riding a Malibu-style board. We were all undergunned.”

There are at least two versions of who caught the first wave that morning. Greg Noll says he did. Mickey Munoz—who, in ’57, had yet to graduate from high school—claims it was Harry Schurch. What remains clear, though, is that Noll, Munoz, Church, Mike Stange and a few other adventurers stepped over the line into the unknown that November morning, ushering in a new era of modern surfing; one that definitely extended the boundaries of what was thought possible.

“It’s funny,” Munoz recalls. “It wasn’t until I got to the beach, turned around and watched a few rides, that the full impact of what we’d done hit me. Then I went absolutely nuts!” As if to foreshadow the price the Bay would extract over the next 33 years, Noll wrenched his shoulder after spinning out on a wave that first day, and the injury plagued him for the duration of his big-wave career.


There have always been those who claim Waimea is a big drop and nothing more; that it’s not a quality wave. “The guys who knock Waimea are totally removed from the environment here,” argues Peter Cole, whose Waimea career spans 30-plus years. “True, a 15-18' wave at the Bay isn’t that good—it’s basically a mediocre peak and drop. But, when the swell is 20-25' and coming a little bit out of the north side of the northwest, it’s one of the greatest waves you’ll ever see.”

Ken Bradshaw agrees: “In theory, yeah, you could design a better wave. But you ride Waimea for the sheer size. You ride for the drop. ”

“Big-waveriders disagree on a lot of things,” Noll points out, “but I don’t think any of them would disagree about this: To be good Waimea, it has to have more than size. It has to have a certain look and feel. A little wind coming out of the valley pushing the waves back, holding them up a bit—that kind of thing.”

Longtime observers claim the wave itself has actually evolved over the years. “Everything changes,” says Waimea pioneer and oceanographer Rick Grigg. “Waimea’s no exception. The biggest years have been ’58, ’69, ’74 and ’82. In the past 10 years, because of concentrations of warm water in the Western Pacific, we’ve had a lot more west swells, and I think that’s what accounts for the buildup of sand in the middle of the Bay; sand drifting down from Laniakea. So we’re seeing the actual wave patterns change.”

“West swells,” says Bradshaw, getting more specific, “have more ledge. The waves are harder to get into.”

“West swells are a nightmare,” adds Darrick Doerner. “It’s a totally different lineup, and you’ve got to watch for that foaming close-out set. A 25' set out of the west presents a truly dangerous situation. Regulars know to stay closer to the takeoff spot on the point. It’s the inexperienced guys strung out toward the middle of the Bay who get picked off. Sitting there, you play right into the hands of a 25' west set.”

At the moment, Doerner, a North Shore lifeguard, is generally regarded as the Main Man at the Bay. As someone who’s surfed the place religiously for 15 years, he speaks of riding 25'+ days in a measured, soft-spoken way, absent of bravado and mysticism: “On a 25' wave you’re on instinct, totally. The drop is the thing. It’s unlike anything else, that drop. It’s a complete blur.. .a rollercoaster ride with your hands up. After you come out of the bottom turn and make it to the shoulder, you’re on top of the world. Nobody can touch you.”

Richard Schmidt, the sole Californian on the current Waimea A-list, echoes Doerner’s assessment: “The wave at Waimea can be very deceiving. It doesn’t seem that big on take-off. But, once you’re over the ledge, it sucks out those extra feet before you’re even halfway down the face, then it sucks out even more before you reach bottom. I think of Waimea in terms of pure velocity. Velocity and thickness. It’s strange, because the wave has no real back to it—when it breaks, it’s like the whole ocean is unloading.”

If you ask someone what it’s like to paddle out on a truly horrendous day—

 Waimea, as the regulars say—there’s likely to be an audible pause preceding the answer. It’s like asking an astronaut to describe what Earth looks like from outer space.

“When I paddle out,” says Brock Little, who, at 23, is the youngest of the Waimea frontliners, “even though I really want it. I'm always kind of scared. I want to catch the closeout sets; the waves most people won’t ride. Still, there’re lots of butterflies; the feeling that, hey—it’s 

 out here. Survivability enters your mind, but it’s not key. I’m paddling out to catch big waves and have fun.”

“You paddle out on full adrenaline,” offers Doerner. “You watch your breathing and stay calm. You’ve got to be completely loose to maneuver out through the channel, over the lineup and into a 25' wave—and not make a mistake. 


Anyone who has stood out on the point at Waimea on a maximum-size day and witnessed one joint-wrenching wipeout after another has wondered—slack-jawed and out loud, usually—why there aren’t more serious injuries, even deaths.

“There’s no simple answer,” says Grigg. “It’s a deepwater spot, for one thing, so you don’t hit bottom as often as you do at Pipeline and other places. It’s about 20-25' deep over that volcanic-rock reef. Another factor is that, although the regulars are aggressive in their approach, they know what they’re doing. Guys who take off deep know how to penetrate. Meanwhile, the ones who sit closer to the shoulder don’t really put themselves in a position of danger. Sure, they’ll freefall on takeoff, but they’re landing in even deeper water out toward the channel.”

“There’s no question deep water keeps injuries down,” says Keone Downing, $55,000 winner of last season’s Quiksilver event, “although guys will still hit bottom once in a while. Also, regulars in the lineup are in great physical condition and understand the situation out there.”

“Titus Kinimaka, Brock, Ken, Darrick—they’re all superb athletes,” says Grigg, who’s hit bottom four or five times since he began riding the Bay in 1958. “Those guys are so strong, when they get hit by a wave they’re just not going to drown. Generally, the time between set waves is about 12-14 seconds, and you’ve also been carried shoreward, which adds maybe another 4-10 seconds before the next wave rolls through. So, if you don’t hit bottom and get knocked out, there’s almost always going to be enough time to get up.”

One of the worst wipeouts Grigg ever witnessed involved Eddie Aikau. So seminal had Aikau’s role been at Waimea, it’s still referred to as “Eddie’s spot.” Grigg recalls: “I saw Eddie come up—just rocketing out of the water. He was actually in a huge boil that was churning so strongly, it tossed him out of the water all the way to his waist. His eye and forehead were bloodied from where he’d hit the reef. Then he was sucked back down again. It was horrible.”

If there’s one thing today’s top echelon of Waimea riders shares with the original crew from the fifties and sixties it’s that they are, in fact, in peak physical condition. In his book 

, John Grissim talks about a “colorful training ritual” Buzzy Trent and Peter Cole developed, whereby they’d dive to a depth of 60', wedge themselves in a coral cave, and hold their breath to the bursting point.

By consensus, January 18, 1985, was one of the heaviest—if not 

 heaviest—days in big-waveriding history: a day when 30-footers swept across the entire Bay, transforming Waimea into a life-and-death arena. Ken Bradshaw, James Jones, Mark Foo, Alec Cooke and a few others paddled out and faced the largest waves any surfers have ever dealt with. One legendary closeout set that rolled over Jones, Foo and Cooke was estimated by some observers to be at least 50'. Without helicopter rescues, we’d be talking about some of these guys in the past tense.

“I’ve been trying to forget that day ever since,” says Jones, who, along with Bradshaw, dominated the Waimea lineup in the seventies and eighties. “It’s not something I like to dwell on. It definitely made me aware of my mortality.” Jones—who by his own estimation has missed only two or three days at Waimea in 20 years—continues: “When I got to the beach, my first impression was nothing in surfing is worth dying for.”

The first thing you learn about surviving Waimea is how to swim in. “There’s only one way, and that’s through the whitewater along the east side of the Bay,” explains Doerner. “Anywhere else you’re in real danger because the shorebreak will snap your neck like a toothpick. If you can’t make it in between the river and the point, the only option is to swim back around and try again. I went in on the far side once, and I’ll never do it again.”

Sooner or later, everyone who surfs Waimea will have an experience that causes him to reexamine his relationship with the place. “Most guys eventually break—physically or mentally,” says Mark Foo, one of the prominent big-wave riders to emerge since Bradshaw and Jones. “Something so bad will happen, they don’t go out again. Kimo Hollinger was a main figure at the Bay for years and years. Then he had a bad day, washing in over at Jump Rock, and never even considered going back out. Other guys will cut down as they get older, like Cole and Grigg.”

“If you take a 25’ freefall and land on your back, your neck’s going to break,” says Grigg, “and you’re going to be a quad the rest of your life. As you get older, you become a bit stiffer, more brittle. To take 25 years of surfing experience and not pay attention—not stop when conditions warrant it—to me, that’s plain stupid. I fractured my neck in ’82 and spent four months in traction. Since then, I’ve paid attention to my body’s limits.”


There's no doubt in my mind,” says Richard Schmidt, “that big-wave riding is entering a new era. In the old days, they pretty much had to just set a line and charge, but now we’re able to actually maneuver.”

There was no more vivid evidence of this than Schmidt’s incredible ultra-late takeoff in this year’s Quiksilver contest. “I stood up," he recalls, "started to freefall, and the wind caught the bottom of my board and lifted the nose a little. I was floating through the air, with the wind holding the board against my feet, while I freefell about 10 feet. Afterward, I was just ecstatic. That kind of experience is the epitome of big-wave riding; just putting the whole thing on the line and going for broke.”

Equipment has been the agent of change at Waimea Bay. Although the size of full guns has dropped steadily over the years—from 11'-plus in the sixties and seventies to a leaner 10'+ today—the drastic difference has been in weight: George Downing, Pat Curren, Bob Sheppard, Mike Diffenderfer, Fred Van Dyke and Greg Noll were piloting boards that weighed anywhere from 35-42 pounds, necessitating a crude, “set-a-course-and-go” strategy. With some equipment now weighing in at around 15 pounds, riders are exploring new performance frontiers.

“I think small-wave performance has pretty much been pushed as far as it’ll go,” says Schmidt. “As for big waves, I don’t think we’ve even come close to surfing them to their full potential.”

The surfer universally acknowledged as leading the charge toward filling that potential is Brock Little. “What a lot of people don’t realize about Brock,” observes Doerner, “is he’s not new to the game. He’s been surfing the North Shore since he was born. Respect isn’t just given to you at Waimea—you earn it. And you earn it through every season you surf there. Brock has been handed a lot of publicity, but he backs it up 100%. Waimea requires years of experience and, fortunately for us guys in our thirties, that’s when you really peak at the Bay. Hey—you think Brock Little is bad now? Wait til he hits 30!”

Little made a major statement at the ’90 Quiksilver event by pulling into a tube on a 20-footer. “We couldn’t have ridden a wave like that in our day,” says Grigg, who witnessed it. “Thirty years ago our boards were just big lumbering tanks. What Brock did was amazing. Had he not come through that tube, the wave would’ve sent him to the bottom.” James Jones—the original Waimea tuberider, having first pulled in back in 1977—doesn’t see tuberiding becoming a regular item in anyone’s repertoire, however. “It’s too dangerous. Most guys only try it once. Titus [Kinimaka] made a second attempt, and the wave broke his leg.”


If anything stands in the way of progression at Waimea Bay, it’s the crowds. Particularly in the 15-18' range, and even up to 20', the lineup today is filled with pretenders, novices and incompetents. “That’s the most dangerous thing about the Bay,” says Jones. One obvious solution lies in the various North Shore outer reefs but, as Bradshaw points out, “As desirable as they are, they’re simply not as productive as the Bay: On a solid 20' Waimea swell you have two-to-three-wave sets cranking through every 10-15 minutes. That's not true for the outer reefs; it's just not as consistent out there."

Then, of course, there’s Makaha. “After Waimea goes out of control,” says Doerner, “I’ll go over to the Westside. I love Makaha; it’s a great big beautiful wave—and it’s horrifying at 25’-plus. I don’t know the place well enough to ride it and have fun; the Downings and Keaulanas really understand it.”

According to Keone Downing: “Makaha is a much longer wave than Waimea. You’ve got to negotiate 150-200 yards of wall and make it through the Bowl. I learned to survive big waves there. When I was young, my dad [George Downing] intentionally stuffed me in the pit. He knew if I could get through that I’d be able to handle anything.”

Mark Foo surfed Makaha for the first time this year, and says, “It really opened my eyes.” He readily acknowledges that Makaha at 20' is a better wave in terms of length-of-ride, but ultimately comes down in favor of the Bay: “Waimea’s got a stronger hold on me and always will."

Is Makaha an option for underground hero Roger Erickson? “No, sir,” he drawls. “I’m just a homeboy. I don’t like to travel in cars.”

For the elite group of surfers who live for Waimea, it often seems life is marked almost exclusively by giant swells and memorable rides; that time in between is nothing but preparation for the next 25' drop.

“Every day I surf,” says Foo, “is getting ready for days here at the Bay. Every time I lift, work out—every time I pay my mortgage,” he laughs. “This is what I’m here for.”

“For the older generation,” says Doerner, “Waimea was a place you rode; a place you survived. That’s how I learned it. But with new equipment and knowledge, it’s being ripped. Not just ridden, but 

Little adds: “There’s a fine edge at the Bay, and some guys are right on that edge. If we keep pushing, somebody’s going to die. But we don’t talk about it. I’m out there to have fun—that’s what it’s all about. I don’t plan on dying out there. Darrick, all my friends—we don’t dwell on the danger.”

“My reasons for riding the place have changed,” says Erickson, now 43. “When I was younger, I was more into charging and proving myself. I’ve done that. More and more, I feel my surfing’s evolving into a form of dance. I’m sharpening my art. But,” he adds after a moment’s pause, “you’ve still got to be full-aggro—no putzing around on big waves. When the Bay’s at its biggest you’ve got to be absolutely committed...

[Photos: Darrell Jones, Don James, Tim McCullough,

"THE BAY: WAIMEA BAY IS STILL DEFINING THE SURFER'S CONCEPTS OF MASS, VOLUME, POWER AND SANITY," BY ALLSTON JAMES (1990)

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